


Knights in Shining Armour

by Löwenzahn (ultimatebookworm)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Magic-Users, Multi, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, basically they've all got weirdass powers, klance, or at least leading up to it, that's it that's the story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 00:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11566251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimatebookworm/pseuds/L%C3%B6wenzahn
Summary: Lance has always been told to stay hidden. To stay quiet. Not to let anyone know of his gifts. But he never could be ordinary. Hunted, chased down and broken, he will meet his greatest allies, his greatest foes, and the person who will enable him a new beginning.





	Knights in Shining Armour

Lance McClain didn't want to run anymore.

He'd been running for so long now, running from everything and everyone. He was cold, and he was lonely and scared and hungry, and he no longer wanted to run.

He swirled his finger around lazily in the puddle at his feet, trying to ignore his jacket getting heavier and wetter on his shoulders. He twisted his hand deftly, raising the water into dancing, laughing shapes of people he was trying so hard to remember although the memories slipped through his fingers and trickled out of his hands like tears.

Beside him sat his travel bag, a sad, wet lump. The bus stop didn't have a roof, and Lance was getting wetter and colder by the minute. Lance liked the bus shelters with roofs. They were good places to sleep. Dry, at least. And safer than shop fronts.

He quickly let the dancing water shapes melt and slosh back into the puddle as an old woman on the opposite side of the road opened her front door. He stood up, grabbing his travel bag, as she hobbled across the street, ready to run even though his knees shook.

"Hello, young man." She smiled a faded old-woman's smile. She seemed nice enough. Lance didn't trust her. She reminded him of someone. His entire body shuddered at the memory, as if the aftershocks of the taser were still deep in his bones. He didn't say anything, just took a step backward as she moved towards him.

"What are you doing out here, in the rain, all alone? There isn't going to be another bus until the morning." The old woman peered at him from behind  gold-rimmed glasses. "How old are you, child?"

She sounded so concerned. Lance's heart ached for a moment. "Seventeen." He shuffled his feet awkwardly, ignoring the squelching sounds his shoes made at the movement. The old woman's face softened.

"Please," she said, "come on in. You can sleep on my couch for the night. You're too young to be out here on your own."

Lance wanted to, oh, how he wanted to, a soft couch and a dry house sounded so tempting, but... "No." He replied firmly. "Thank you, but..." He swallowed down his next words. _I don't want to endanger you._

"Honey," the old woman seemed confused. "Please, just... come in. You'll catch your death."

"I'll be fine." Lance gave a brittle smile. _They're already on my heels._

"Should I call your parents? The police?"

Even just her mentioning the police sent cold shocks of fear racing through Lance's limbs. "Please... please don't..." he stuttered, backing away. _They're everywhere._ "I have to go..." _They'll find me._

Lance shook his head, ignoring the bewildered woman, turned around and ran away through the rain, ignoring the old woman's shout. _They'll find me._

His feet pounded over the wet asphalt, jacket clinging to him, wet hair sticking to his forehead, cold water droplets sliding down the back of his neck. _They'll find me._

Rain sputtered and wind howled, and Lance McClain thought to himself  as he collapsed in a dark alleyway that he couldn't go on much longer. _They'll find me._

As a child, he had had a storybook, a book of fairytales with the most beautiful illustrations he had ever seen. He had loved to flip through it, tracing his fingers over the pictures. Sometimes it felt like they were breathing under his fingertips, like they were coming alive to his touch.

And sometimes they did exactly that.

Lance could spend hours with the pictures he had brought to life. His family was a large one, so he was never alone for long, but in the nights when he couldn't sleep, he'd get up, stretch on his tiptoes to grab a storybook from his shelf and then rush back to his bed, open the book and run chubby little fingers over the pictures, feel the energy run through his fingers with dizzying, sparkling force. It felt like drinking a fizzy drink, Lance thought, just that the prickling ran from the tips of his fingers through his entire body and curled firmly in his heart until he forced it all out with a long, slow breath, breathed it all straight into the pages of the book.

He would watch as the energy, all that energy that had been inside him, gathered on the page like a storm of golden glitter, watched as it swirled and twisted, coloured and drew together until the picture that had previously been on the page opened its eyes and smiled, breathed, looked around in wonderment. Lance would clap his chubby hands in pleasure, and bring another picture to life, and another, and another, until he had a host of princesses and princes, monsters and witches in his room, dancing, laughing, swirling and speaking in a host of voices only he could understand.

He fell asleep often to the glitter and the chatter of his friends, fairytale book open underneath his cheek. In the morning, they would be gone, leaving behind nothing but glittering golden dust that was gone as soon as Lance touched it.

It didn't take him long to realize that he didn't need pictures to create apparitions. But it was different. The pictures were _people._ The apparitions were just... illusions. Flat and dull and lifeless, they didn't glitter, or dance, or laugh, they didn't have that human warmth and Lance's hand passed through them as easily as through clouds.

"Mummy?" Lance asked one day. "Why do grown-up books not have pictures in them?"

"Honey?" Lance's mother was a kind woman, an understanding woman, but she didn't much understand Lance's love for pictures. "Why would they need pictures?"

"To make the stories come alive, of course." Lance reached up a chubby hand as his mother passed him a stack of laundry and sank down, cross-legged, to begin clumsily folding it. His mother sat opposite him with a pile of her own.

"Honey, as you grow up, you'll realize you won't need pictures to make the stories come alive. You can make them come alive by the text alone." She smiled at him gently, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Lance frowned, confused, and wiped at his nose with a small fist. "But how will the letters move?" He asked. "How do they smile?" Besides, letters didn't have the same kind of energy pictures had, that fizzy-drink-energy. But maybe that would happen as he grew older.

"Smile?" His mother seemed confused. Lance stood up. "Wait here." He told her, and ran to his room, grabbed the storybook from the shelf and hurried back to the kitchen.

"Look!" He told his mum, kneeling and opening the book to the story of Rapunzel. Rapunzel was his favourite. She had the nicest smile, and gave the warmest hugs. She could always cheer him up, just like his mum could. He wanted his mum to meet her.

He touched his chubby fingers to the smiling picture, felt the energy gathering, felt it twisting and coiling and burning, and released it with a deep breath.

The golden storm swirled and condensed and tightened, coloured and twisted until the picture stood in front of them, large as life. Lance ran towards her with a smile, leaping up towards her as she caught him in his arms, laughter as clear as a bell. Lance curled into her arms and looked towards his mother with a proud smile.

As he looked at her, his smile fell, ice running through his veins suddenly. The warm, secure arms of Rapunzel wavered, twisted, and he quickly focused on her, on not letting her fall apart. "Mama?" His voice shook.

His mother looked horrified. Stunned, scared, disgusted, her face twisting into a multitude of emotions he had never seen before.

"Lance..." Her voice was cold and sharp. "Come here."

"Mama?"

"Now." He climbed down and trotted over to her. He felt ashamed, for some reason, and scared. She wasn't supposed to react this way. She was supposed to be glad. Not... angry.

She pointed at Rapunzel, the glowing figure now pale and shaky. "Stop that... magic."

Rapunzel crumbled like a sandcastle washed away by waves, grey dust gathering by the pages of the storybook.

"Lance." His mother kneeled. "I don't want you to do that ever again. Okay? No more... magic. It's dangerous."

Lance looked up at her with wide blue eyes. "Are you angry at me?"

Her frown softened and she gathered him into a hug. "Of course not, honey." He clung to her, burying his face into her curls. "I'm not angry. Just... please. No more magic."

"No more magic." Lance promised, hands curling into chubby little fists. "I promise."

 

Of course, that wasn't the end of it. Lance didn't keep to his promise. He just learned to stay quiet, controlled, muted. He learned to live underneath his own floorboards, creating dancing illusions in the shadows beneath his bed.

He learned about himself. He learned to make pictures more alive, more vibrant, until they could live without him, until they stayed awake by his bedside all night and only fell to dust when he commanded them too. He learned to bring pictures alive to comfort him, to listen to him, to help him when no-one else could. He learned that the pictures had no personality of their own, that they were simply empty shells waiting to be filled with commands, and he learned to accept that.

He learned to stop relying on the pictures, learned to seek help elsewhere, with real people, warm people. He learned how to use the pictures to hide, to defend himself.

Over time, he also learned why. He watched as classmates used "magic freak" as an insult, watched as teachers warned them to report all magical activity, watched as the man living just down the road was taken away after he was spotted healing his little daughter's bloody knee with magic.

"What did he do wrong, mum?" He was twelve, no longer chubby, no longer small or hopeful.

His mother had long since pretended to forget that one day in the kitchen. "He wasn't careful enough, honey."

Lance looked up at her and understood.

When he was fourteen, he watched as one of his classmates went quiet and started to avoid anyone else, watched as the school bullies beat her up and called her names, watched as the teacher bullied her into crying, watched as tears welled up in her eyes, tears that froze on her cheeks as the desk in front of her was covered in ice crystals.

She was never seen again, and he stayed quiet, he kept his head down, breath stopping whenever he had to touch pictures although he knew full well how to control his abilities. He learned to live beneath the floorboards, to hide between the pages, and life went on in silent.

 

Lance was awoken the next morning by loud clattering and stomping as someone emptied their trash bin into the dumpster. It was a cold awakening, the kind that makes you want to curl up and give in and just stop moving. His jacket was soaked through, his sneakers soggy, and he could feel the cold settled in his bones, so unshakeably deep inside him he could hardly breathe.

Apparently he must have made some kind of sound, because the woman emptying her bin into the dumpster turned around, face twisting in disgust as she spotted him. Lance shrunk away, huddling close to the wall. She took a step towards him and he flinched, hating himself for it in the same moment. How had it all come to this? How had he ended up alone, scared and cold in an alleyway in a foreign town?

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was harsh and loud, and grated in Lance's ears, smarting like punches and making his head spin in fear. "Clear out, we don't need people like you in this neighbourhood."

Lance pushed himself to his feet, shaking from cold, a sudden wave of vertigo taking him in the same moment he remembered he had last eaten more than a day ago. He ignored it, pushing through the clawing emptiness in his stomach and the burning ache in his chest and stumbling out into the daylight, not looking back for a single moment.

All the smells and all the sounds of the city seemed to take him at once, dragging him into the hurricane of noise and colour, making his head spin and his breath quicken, his heart beating furiously against his chest as if all it wanted was to run, to hide, to never stop until he was finally alone, finally safe.

One or two people gave him concerned looks as they passed, but most didn't spare him a single glance. _It's better that way._ Lance thought to himself as he pulled up the hood of his jacket, trying to melt into the daily landscape of people rushing past.

He walked around for the better part of three hours, trying to find a train station or bus stop. He still had a bit of money. Enough to get him to the next town.

Lance didn't like staying in a place. If he stayed for a while, it was just to earn enough money to move on to the next town.

Once he found a station, he bought a ticket, ignoring the concerned look he got from the man at the cash desk when he asked for a ticket to the furthest place his money would take him. He had to wait for a bit, but that was fine by him. The station was warm, and he was still cold and more than a little damp from the night spent outside in the rain. He curled up in a corner of the station and slept, arms slung protectively around his bag.

Once on the train, he did much the same, curled up and slept while he could. It was warm here, and dry, and who knew when he could afford to sleep again. He awoke several times on the journey, used by now to waking up at the slightest disturbance. To sleep was to be vulnerable, and Lance didn't want to be vulnerable.

 

It was almost dark by the time he stumbled off the train, in another new city that he didn't know. He looked around. He had no money left. He would have to stay for a while, find a way to scrape together some cash for food and his ticket to the next place. But for now, he needed dinner. He hadn't eaten in far too long, and by now he was so hungry he could no longer ignore it.

He found a quiet corner of town, a place where only the occasional car drifted through the night with a rush and the sound of splashing water. There were no people on the streets, just a small grocer's store where a lonely employee lazily wiped the counter. Lance ducked into a nearby alleyway, fishing around in his bag for his sidewalk chalks. He needed a few simple strokes, just dashes of colour really, before he put them back and placed both hands on the crude painting on the wall. He felt the tingle, the telltale fizz, in his fingertips, down his spine. He breathed in.

It had taken him a long time to learn to bring to life his own drawings, so imperfect and crude, without them looking like stick figures or blobs of colour. Even now, he had to use an illusion to mask his creation's imperfections, but it worked. He could bring to life what he himself had drawn, could make it something so real and warm and convincing people thought it was human.

He breathed out, slowly, watching as the wall gleamed with energy, the colour engulfed by gold, watched as the dust swirled and coiled and danced into the shape of a middle-aged woman with a large handbag. Her eyes were too flat, her arms thin as sticks and her coat had a strangely... chalky quality to it, but as Lance drew up an additional illusion around her, nothing more than a ghost, a whisper, all those imperfections faded and she stood before him, blinking in the streetlight.

Lance smiled in satisfaction, feeling her presence in his mind, feeling the live drawing pulse at the back of his brain like an additional consciousness. He took control easily, simply, moving her arms and legs and letting her round the corner to walk towards the grocer's, handbag clutched tight.

He followed cautiously, keeping his distance, and watched from the entrance to the alleyway as she entered the grocer's. There was another man there too, now, and Lance cursed silently. He had relied on the shop being empty. Ah, well. He had to work with what he got.

He let his drawing wander around, looking at the fruit, studying the butter, while the man and the grocer talked. The man shot occasional glances at the drawing, frowning, and Lance felt his heartbeat thudding in his chest. What if he knew, somehow? But no, that was impossible. And besides, there was nothing he could do now.

He sighed in relief as the man finally said his goodbyes and left. The grocer turned to his walking drawing and smiled, and Lance felt his breath catching. This was it. This was where it could all go wrong.

But the grocer simply smiled, and asked her how he could help, and Lance let out a deep breath of relief and let her talk, let her ask about the way, talk about her son, her life, about how she was visiting relatives but she was here for the first time and simply _couldn't find the way, oh dear, this is dreadful, I did promise I would be there fifteen minutes ago_ , and even as she talked, Lance crept up outside the display window, reached for the baskets of fruit and vegetables in front of the store and shoved some into his bag, taking apples and carrots and whatever he could eat.

By now, the grocer was fully engaged in the conversation, and Lance opened the door to the store, gave him a smile, and proceeded to head down the next aisle to the milk products, looking around briefly before grabbing a carton of milk, some yoghurt, then snatching some bread from the next aisle, some crackers and a bottle of water.

"Excuse me?" He approached the grocer with a polite smile. Wide, innocent eyes had worked when he was ten. Now that he was seventeen and looked like a streetrat, politeness was the only way to go.

"Do you perhaps have any soy milk?"

The grocer looked at him in surprise. "Sorry, son. Haven't got any." Lance gave him another small smile. "Alright. Thank you anyway."

He left the store with a broad smile, his bag hanging heavy off his shoulder, and let his drawing leave the store as well, a few paces behind him. He made her scurry off in the direction the grocer had indicated, letting her fall to dust as soon as she was out of anyone's sight, and headed back towards the inner town. He had his dinner. Tomorrow he would get his ticket.

 

He found an alleyway near the train station to hide and have his dinner in. After he had eaten just enough to get rid of the pain settled deep in his stomach, he curled up in a doorway, taking out his drawing materials and sketching a host of vaguely humanoid characters on the wall beside his head.

Feeling immediately safer, Lance drew a threadbare blanket over his shoulders, curling up around his bag and hiding his face in his hoodie. Sleep came quickly to him. He didn't have the luxury of staying awake. He needed sleep when he could get it.

It wasn't a gentle falling asleep, not the same softly slipping into dreams that he had known as a child. This was cold, calculated, closing his eyes and falling into a cold, shallow sleep serving to drain the exhaustion from his body and give him the energy to spend another day running.

Lance couldn't remember the last time he had had a dream.

 

He was awoken by a noise from the nearby street. Not the soft, cold swoosh of passing cars, the drunken hollers of passersby, those were sounds he had long since learned to ignore. It was the screeching of tires, the hushed stomp of heavy boots and gentle closing of car doors. Someone didn't want to be heard, but wasn't doing a very good job of it. Lance got up, putting his hand to wall behind him and feeling the energy build up in his fingertips, straining to hear more from the lip of the alleyway.

"The informant said he'd be here..." Someone whispered. Lance stiffened. _Informant_ never meant anything good.

"...nothing to be scared of..." Lance's fingers were shaking, his heart shaking against his ribs in a terrified pattern. "Just an illusionist."

Lance sprang into action immediately, letting the fear clutching him in a stranglehold drain into the wall, letting the urge to protect, to survive, bring the drawings under his palms to life. He was itching with the urge to run, his legs trembling as he waited for the figures to form fully.

"There he is!" Lance's heart embedded itself firmly in his throat, fear spiking high in his mind. The wall under his hand was still glowing gold although around him, the figures were almost solid.

Lance didn't hesitate another second, tore his hand from the wall, sending a bolt of pretend fire towards the hulking figures that had appeared in the entrance of the alleyway. He heard the screams behind him as he tore off towards the opposite end of the alleyway.

"It's not real!" One of them roared. "He's just an illusionist! After him!"

Lance felt a sob rising up in his throat as he rounded the corner, skidding on the paving stones as he sprinted towards the train station. Around him, people screamed, cars screeching as he sprinted across the road. Lights pulsed, and he suddenly realized that there were more of them, sprinting after him from where they had been waiting by the opening of the alleyway.

Lance cursed himself as he forced his legs to work faster. He should have made two of his drawings come with him to protect him. But he had left them all behind, left them behind to grapple with one of the two forces. And now he had an entire group of thugs on his heels.

He could feel his feet slipping from under him, the soles of his shoes thin and worn through from weeks of walking, could feel the exhaustion build up in his limbs with a slow, creeping numbness, could feel his lungs giving out, could feel his chest shaking with exertion, could feel his muscles screaming, but he ran on, stumbling, falling, pushing through crowds, tottering, stumbling, getting slower and slower... no, he needed to move, needed to _run..._

He tripped and was sent flying, hearing scared screams as he landed hard, shoulder stinging as he slid across the tarmac. What... his eyes widened in panic as he saw dark figures running up, boots thundering on the tarmac. He tried to move, tried to push himself up, but his arm had gone numb. Too late he realized that his limbs were growing heavy, his mind swimming, the world going out of focus except for a single throbbing spot of pain at the back of his neck, some kind of tranquilizer.

Shot down and stunned like an animal.

Lance couldn't even bring up the strength to panic as he was grabbed roughly and his hands were cuffed, slowly slipping into warm, swirling darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this, so come talk to me on tumblr and help me figure it out! [a-beacon-of-joy](http://www.a-beacon-of-joy.tumblr.com)


End file.
